While attending an event at a SeaTac hotel last week, I met two women who receive the $15/hour minimum wage. SeaTac has implemented the new law on Jan. 1. I met the women while they were working. One was a waitress and the other was cleaning the hallway.

“Are you happy with the $15 wage?” I asked the full-time cleaning lady.

The hotel used to feed her. Now, she has to bring her own food. Also, no overtime, she said. She used to work extra hours and received overtime pay.

What else? I asked.

“I have to pay for parking,” she said.

I then asked the part-time waitress, who was part of the catering staff.

“Yes, I’ve got $15 an hour, but all my tips are now much less,” she said. Before the new wage law was implemented, her hourly wage was $7. But her tips added to more than $15 an hour. Yes, she used to receive free food and parking. Now, she has to bring her own food and pay for parking.

Another staffer did not want to say anything, but he did say the $15 has a huge impact on the hotel.

The wait staff said the hotel across the street is unionized. Therefore, management is not required to pay the $15 wage. (end)

I’m not a huge fan of either Seattle or Sea-Tac’s minimum wage increase to $15/hr however for as widely quoted nationally as I’ve seen this article, it’s a shame nothing has been cited, no one has verified the quotes are authentic, and most importantly no one has pointed out that while the author notes “before the new hourly wage law was implemented (the woman’s) hourly wage was $7.” Which seems dubious, as the minimum wage in Washington State was, (and still is) $9.19.

With a basic element of the story fabricated at worst, and journalistically un-verified at best, it’s hard to believe anything else about the story without some type of details or specifics.

Too bad the false information from this information has already been widely distributed with other ‘journalists’ failing to catch the obvious error. Let’s see what happens in Sea-Tac and learn from it, good or bad… But don’t pretend you already know what’s going to happen… it just makes the opposition view look weaker and more desperate than it needs to.

I’m not sure I understand the anecdotal info from the “Ng blog”. For example, labor laws dictate a certain amount of vacation time every year for full-time employees, such as the cleaning lady. Also, you cannot ‘lose’ a 401K. You might lose some or all of the matching funds from the company.

Even worse, catering staff don’t get cash tips. Their tips are pre-set (usually around 18%) and included in the contract between the customer and the hotel. Plus, the catering manager and head chef usually receive a cut of the tips anyway, so it’s not like management is going to cut their own income because of this issue.

I think Assunta Ng has a lot of explaining to do, because those quotes just don’t make sense.

Utter party drivel. This article is so poorly written it’s a joke.
1) they have not lost their medical benefits, holidays or 401k. Took me 3 sec on Google to check this!
2) You wages do not affect your tips. this was written by someone who has not a clue about the industry.
3) Not 1 part of this is chackable! “I talked to some one who said!!!” is just dumb!!
4) I want free food instead of 15$ an hr is laughable!!

All this adds up to the article being a poorly written part piece that has no touch with reality!

Jim whines it is “poorly written” and then complains it is not “chackable.” Well, last time I “chacked” that would be poorly written.

What is amusing is how he avoids any substantive argument, he attempts ridicule, albeit rather poorly.

Given that the only point of the article is to report what the writer was told by hotel staff, they talking to hotel staff is not dumb, it is necessary. And, given that they are complaining about the way the hotel responded with the non-market wages they were forced to pay, using their names would have been a bad idea. Unless you want them fired.

If people who have come to Seattle KNOW that waitstaff are being paid $15 an hour, they are going to change how they respond to tipping. If I knew an staff person got that much I wouldn’t leave any tip, zero, none, nada. Eating out is a luxury for me.

Second, I watched South Africa’s ANC government try a new high minimum wage. At the malls all the parking staff disappeared and were replaced by machines.Their skills were simply not worth the wages mandated and unemployment sky-rocketed.

I know the supporters claim that the price of labor has no impact on the demand for labor, but the idea it doesn’t is drivel. When prices go up demand goes down. Double the price of oranges and you buy less oranges. Double the price of houses and far few people purchase homes. This is basic econ 101. It takes one who is ideologically closed-minded to assert that reality doesn’t work that way.

I note that “Jim” is an idiot. The article doesn’t say the workers prefer free food to $15 an hour. It says that was one of a package of things they lost. And given that they will be more highly taxed at $15 an hour, it is quite easily possible that the package of goods they lose will be of greater value than the increase. Someone who actually understood economics, unlike “Jim,” couldn’t dismiss this immediately. At the very least you need to know the hourly income before the wage increase. Salaries did go from $0 per hour to $15 per hour. It is the increase in hourly rates, compared to the lost package, that has to be compared, not the full hourly rate. That’s basic and perhaps a reason that “Jim” is guilty of what he complains about: no touch with reality and assuming people are so gullible they will believe him.

It staggers me that people simply cannot understand that “wages” are merely the cost of labor and when you hike the price of something but not the scarcity of it demand HAS to drop. Gee, it;s too bad we;re importing so much “minimum-wage” labor at a time when we;re also hiking the cost of that labor.

Let’s see how it works among the people who don’t get tips and freebies to cry about. And about that insurance bit. Get Obamacare. My wife and I pay a total of $106 a minth for the best Silver plan in NH. What so many forget about economics is that money in the people’s pockets increases demand and then factories have to restock their inventory for their customers who are the stores who sell to the people with more money. Real Wages have been flat for 30 years.

Told you this law would hurt people; the law hurts the very people it’s supposed to help. Now there will be fewer jobs available to unskilled people, b/c employers who are forced to pay an above-market wage will only hire better-skilled people for those same jobs.

Once again, liberals’ policies which claim to ‘help’ have unintended, bad consequences. Get out of the way and let the free market work. Just ask these women.

How has that “free market” thingy been working for the last 30 years??? Because the last 30 years wages have been stagnant and productivity has increased. Don’t trust me look it up. How much longer do people have to wait for the “free market” do the right thing?

Where have you seen a free market? Certainly not in the U.S. When you have ANY minimum wage, the market is already not free; it’s not allowed to set the price of labor. Multiply that by dozens of requirements and regulations, and the market is far, far from free.

Wages have not been stagnant. Yes I know there are several places one can find on the internet that asserts they have.

Productivity is up NOT due to Joe Blow being to produce more widgets in a given time, it is up because of technology and innovation.

Think about it like this. Say you own a factory that makes widgets. Say you have 10 employees that each do a single step in the production of that widget. You pay each of these employees $10 an hour ($100 an hour total in labor costs).

Now lets say they can make a total of 30 widgets an hour, and each widget is sold for $5. So they are able to produce $150 an hour in product.

Now suppose you the owner invest into a machine that cost you $100,000 to purchase. Let us suppose this machine is able to enable your employees to now produce 60 widgets an hour. Yet they are not working harder or nay faster, they are still putting forth pretty much the same effort as before.

Who do you think should reap the benefits of the machine in this scenario? The workers or the owner?

My guess is that once people know staff is receiving such a high wage they feel no need to tip, as a tip is (generally) considered a way to augment a lower salary and as a reward for good service.
In many states food servers receive $2-4 in wages and are expected to make up the difference between that and the legal minimum wage with their tips. I don’t think this is right, as there is no way to guarantee the amount or number of tips anyone might receive. However, if someone is being paid $15 an hour I personally would feel they were already well compensated for their labor and I would expect they were being ‘rewarded’ in advance for excellent service. On top of that, I’m betting prices went up in these areas, which for me would limit even further the number of times I go out, and the amount I’d be willing to spend while out, which may also explain the decrease in tips the one person quoted is claiming.

You’re right. A lot about this sounds fishy, outside of the fact that 2 anecdotes are supposed to give some indication of the big picture.

Yes, it’s totally possible that people know about the wage changes and lowered or stopped tipping as a result. But if you look at 1) the total number of people that are paying that much attention to the issue, then look at the number of people out of that group that who would care enough to take action and stop/reduce tipping (not only that, but all right at the same time, immediately when the wage change goes into effect?) there’s no way that would be enough people to make a significant enough difference that $15/hr + this new level of tipping would be worse than the previous situation. If this had started happening well after the change where the public at large had been getting hit up with messages about how they shouldn’t have to tip anymore, etc and really ingested that message over a large period of time I could see it being possible. But this sounds like some cherry picked, crafted stories to me…

Why are people assuming that it’s the customer who just stops tipping because the wage is higher? Did it occur to anyone that in many businesses management dictates how tips are handled? Do you realize that many places make servers split tips with other servers, bar tenders, bus people, etc..? Isn’t it possible that management is splitting tips with employees to make up for the doubling of their payroll?

The full amount of tips should still go to the employees. Is it because the number of employees skyrocketed that much in sucn a short period of time? Or are you telling me the company is keeping a larger percentage of the employees tips. If so, (and would that even be legal?), that would be totally wrong, and would highlight a problem with these employers, not a problem with the law or wage itself…

except “everyone” doesn’t know that. Are you going to tell me every hotel, restaurant, every other place you’ve walked into- what you’re thinking is “hmmm…how much do these people get paid? Is it the minimum wage? is it more?…were they affected by this law, or were they already making 15 an hour… I need to figure this out, so I can adjust my tip accordingly”.

SOME people definitely did think this and act accordingly. Most people are going through most parts of their life thinking about what everyone else is- what’s going on in their own lives. When I go to a restaurant I’m just having conversations with the people I’m eating with and enjoying my food. Bill comes, I give a tip based on pecentage. Even the argument that the prices go up, some people notice that and tip less- you really think they are tipping SO much less now that people who were making the previous minimum wage vs current it would actually make the overall amount less?? Remember they ARE still getting tips. And if research on tipping has shown people anyhting, it’s that most of the reason people do it is the social pressure of knowing hte are ‘supposed to’. This change isn’t going to cause people to suddenly start giving 2% tips or something…

Sorry, but this was basically 2 anecdotes, and they don’t even really add up. Trying to make this into a story or proof does nothing but betray an obvious agenda. I’ll be happy to agree that the law is harmful when an actual well controlled study shows me some data to that effect. But what we’ve seen so far is that none of the effects people warn about have actually happened in areas where the minimum wage was raised in the past. But I don’t think we’ve seen a rise of this magnitude before in the past, so I agree we can’t ONLY rely on that. Whether people like it or not, we are going to have an opportunity to see now- I just hope when the data is there, people (on either side) will adjust their opinions accordingly and not cling to anecdotes to avoid admitting they were wrong…

Because the higher cost of labor gets placed on the customer. When the cost of the food is higher, less money to tip with. Plus the perception that since the waiter is now receiving a ‘living wage’, makes the lower tip guilt-free.

while you could be right, mathematically the chances that enough pepole took that position within that short amount of time (that many people not only following the issue, but acting on it *right* at the time it goes into effect…) are pretty low…

I have been following this and honestly wouldn’t have even noticed that i “shouldn’t” leave a higher tip, i just tip off the total and go on my merry way. also, why couldn’t they ask their boss/management to see what they did. I am sure they would have been happy to say, “due to the financial hardship of paying $15 an hour i had to do this and that to balance my books. Businesses in Seattle will do the same thing if they pass it.”

Here’s how that works. If I am eating in a restaurant where I know tips are a part of the employee’s true compensation I tip well. In the early 90’s used to bus, wait tables, and work bar back and tips were why I did it (not my $2.50/hour wage). With tips I typically cleared $10 to 15 an hour which made me a very happy college student.

However, if I know that the person pulling a dramatically over-priced beer for me at the airport is making $15 an hour (nearly as much as my teacher wife) I’ll be damned if I’m tipping. It is no longer part of the compensation.

Cris- You do understand that your (teacher wife) would no longer be making $15 dollars an hour. She’d be making more. Fifteen is the minimum. Obviously if you are a teacher with a college degree you will be making more then the “guy at the airport pouring you your bourgeois beer.”

In most states $15 an hour is barely getting by. Why are you people on here attacking workers and belittling them for trying to make a life for themselves? They are working and paying into our social security. This raise will stimulate our economy…because you know the ultra rich aren’t spending their money. This raise is not going to lose jobs. A human still costs less then a machine…which we all are only machines to our bosses. After reading these comments it looks to me like a few of you have become just that.

We as workers deserve a LIVING wage! And 15 dollars an hour is just that.

I’ve lived off of $9 per hour and that was just 3 years ago. $15 per hour is not required for someone to “live” off of. Maybe in America where people spend $70 per month on cell phone bills and believe they cannot survive without an individual 2 bedroom apartment to live in. If we are all to get paid what we deem we need to “live” off of then should single mothers of 3 children get $40 per hour?

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